Arthur Clennam rose hastily, and saw her standing at the door.
This history must sometimes see with Little Dorrit's eyes, and
shall begin that course by seeing him.

Little Dorrit looked into a dim room, which seemed a spacious one
to her, and grandly furnished. Courtly ideas of Covent Garden, as
a place with famous coffee-houses, where gentlemen wearing gold-
laced coats and swords had quarrelled and fought duels; costly
ideas of Covent Garden, as a place where there were flowers in
winter at guineas a-piece, pine-apples at guineas a pound, and peas
at guineas a pint; picturesque ideas of Covent Garden, as a place
where there was a mighty theatre, showing wonderful and beautiful
sights to richly-dressed ladies and gentlemen, and which was for
ever far beyond the reach of poor Fanny or poor uncle; desolate
ideas of Covent Garden, as having all those arches in it, where the
miserable children in rags among whom she had just now passed, like
young rats, slunk and hid, fed on offal, huddled together for
warmth, and were hunted about (look to the rats young and old, all
ye Barnacles, for before God they are eating away our foundations,
and will bring the roofs on our heads!); teeming ideas of Covent
Garden, as a place of past and present mystery, romance, abundance,
want, beauty, ugliness, fair country gardens, and foul street
gutters; all confused together,--made the room dimmer than it was
in Little Dorrit's eyes, as they timidly saw it from the door.

At first in the chair before the gone-out fire, and then turned
round wondering to see her, was the gentleman whom she sought. The
brown, grave gentleman, who smiled so pleasantly, who was so frank
and considerate in his manner, and yet in whose earnestness there
was something that reminded her of his mother, with the great
difference that she was earnest in asperity and he in gentleness.
Now he regarded her with that attentive and inquiring look before
which Little Dorrit's eyes had always fallen, and before which they
fell still.

'My poor child! Here at midnight?'

'I said Little Dorrit, sir, on purpose to prepare you. I knew you
must be very much surprised.'

'Are you alone?'

'No sir, I have got Maggy with me.'

Considering her entrance sufficiently prepared for by this mention
of her name, Maggy appeared from the landing outside, on the broad
grin. She instantly suppressed that manifestation, however, and
became fixedly solemn.

'And I have no fire,' said Clennam. 'And you are--' He was going
to say so lightly clad, but stopped himself in what would have been
a reference to her poverty, saying instead, 'And it is so cold.'

Putting the chair from which he had risen nearer to the grate, he
made her sit down in it; and hurriedly bringing wood and coal,
heaped them together and got a blaze.

'Your foot is like marble, my child;' he had happened to touch it,
while stooping on one knee at his work of kindling the fire; 'put
it nearer the warmth.' Little Dorrit thanked him hastily. It was
quite warm, it was very warm! It smote upon his heart to feel that
she hid her thin, worn shoe.

Little Dorrit was not ashamed of her poor shoes. He knew her
story, and it was not that. Little Dorrit had a misgiving that he
might blame her father, if he saw them; that he might think, 'why
did he dine to-day, and leave this little creature to the mercy of
the cold stones!' She had no belief that it would have been a just
reflection; she simply knew, by experience, that such delusions did
sometimes present themselves to people. It was a part of her
father's misfortunes that they did.

'Before I say anything else,' Little Dorrit began, sitting before
the pale fire, and raising her eyes again to the face which in its
harmonious look of interest, and pity, and protection, she felt to
be a mystery far above her in degree, and almost removed beyond her
guessing at; 'may I tell you something, sir?'

'Yes, my child.'
A slight shade of distress fell upon her, at his so often calling
her a child. She was surprised that he should see it, or think of
such a slight thing; but he said directly:
'I wanted a tender word, and could think of no other. As you just
now gave yourself the name they give you at my mother's, and as
that is the name by which I always think of you, let me call you
Little Dorrit.'

'Thank you, sir, I should like it better than any name.'

'Little Dorrit.'

'Little mother,' Maggy (who had been falling asleep) put in, as a
correction.

'It's all the same, MaggY,' returned Little Dorrit, 'all the same.'

'Is it all the same, mother?'

'Just the same.'

Maggy laughed, and immediately snored. In Little Dorrit's eyes and
ears, the uncouth figure and the uncouth sound were as pleasant as
could be. There was a glow of pride in her big child,
overspreading her face, when it again met the eyes of the grave
brown gentleman. She wondered what he was thinking of, as he
looked at Maggy and her. She thought what a good father he would
be. How, with some such look, he would counsel and cherish his
daughter.

'What I was going to tell you, sir,' said Little Dorrit, 'is, that
MY brother is at large.'

Arthur was rejoiced to hear it, and hoped he would do well.

'And what I was going to tell you, sir,' said Little Dorrit,
trembling in all her little figure and in her voice, 'is, that I am
not to know whose generosity released him--am never to ask, and am
never to be told, and am never to thank that gentleman with all MY
grateful heart!'

He would probably need no thanks, Clennam said. Very likely he
would be thankful himself (and with reason), that he had had the
means and chance of doing a little service to her, who well
deserved a great one.

'And what I was going to say, sir, is,' said Little Dorrit,
trembling more and more, 'that if I knew him, and I might, I would
tell him that he can never, never know how I feel his goodness, and
how my good father would feel it. And what I was going to say,
sir, is, that if I knew him, and I might--but I don't know him and
I must not--I know that!--I would tell him that I shall never any
more lie down to sleep without having prayed to Heaven to bless him
and reward him. And if I knew him, and I might, I would go down on
my knees to him, and take his hand and kiss it and ask him not to
draw it away, but to leave it--O to leave it for a moment--and let
my thankful tears fall on it; for I have no other thanks to give
him!'

Little Dorrit had put his hand to her lips, and would have kneeled
to him, but he gently prevented her, and replaced her in her chair.

Her eyes, and the tones of her voice, had thanked him far better
than she thought. He was not able to say, quite as composedly as
usual, 'There, Little Dorrit, there, there, there! We will suppose
that you did know this person, and that you might do all this, and
that it was all done. And now tell me, Who am quite another
person--who am nothing more than the friend who begged you to trust
him--why you are out at midnight, and what it is that brings you so
far through the streets at this late hour, my slight, delicate,'
child was on his lips again, 'Little Dorrit!'